[Photo Album]: Nurse in Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, 1914. Near Fine. Oblong quarto. Measuring 7" x 11". Black pebble grain leather over paper boards with "Photographs" stamped in gilt on the front board. Contains 138 sepia toned or black and white gelatin silver photographs measuring 2.5" x 4.5" to 4" x 5", with captions. Album is near fine with some rubbing and near fine photographs.A photo album kept by a nurse, Jane (last name not revealed), between 1907 and 1914. The album details her time at hospitals in Pennsylvania with her nursing friends as well as their leisure time. On the verso of the front board a poem is written that reads: "If you were feeling kind a' blue, and peace and sadness seemed to blend, what would you want to cheer you up? What would you want from your best friend? Would it be this?" The photos seem to have been taken by a head nurse with captions such as "my nurses" and show women in the starched white uniforms, hats, and capes worn by nurses of the time. She documented their "first cases" by taking pictures with other nurses and their patients, and of different shifts with a focus on the night nurses. One photo reads, "a sympathy group, we suffered together all night," which shows a group of night nurses in the early morning hours posing on the Pennsylvania Hospital grounds in front of a statue of William Penn. The nurses are shown throughout the album posing with doctors and patients. Along with the hospital photographs there are also photos of the women enjoying their time at the beach, a trip to St. Petersburg, Florida, and at farms of friends.A wonderful collection of snapshots depicting the lives of nurses in the early 1900s.
[Bookseller: Between the Covers- Rare Books, Inc. ABA]